


Birds of America

by sevenfists



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-17
Updated: 2007-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-28 09:50:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10828818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists
Summary: After a certain point, you can't turn back.Sam knows it like he knows the lopsided triangle of moles on the back of his hand, only deeper than that, like how his lungs know to draw breath—unconsciously, and forever.





	Birds of America

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to mcee for the beta.

After a certain point, you can't turn back.

Sam knows it like he knows the lopsided triangle of moles on the back of his hand, only deeper than that, like how his lungs know to draw breath—unconsciously, and forever.

He knows it, standing over Dean with a bloody knife in one hand, the other hand reaching down to raise Dean off the ground. He's lost himself to it: this life, the hunt, his brother.

They hole up at Bobby's for two days. Dean's got a sprained ankle that he won't let Sam look at, whining like a child whenever Sam gets too close. Sam gives up after a while and goes to sit on the porch with Bobby and drink beers.

"Stubborn bastard, just like your daddy," Bobby says.

Sam teeths the rim of his bottle, the glass cool and solid against his mouth.

***

Dean's up the next day, mincing around, and they leave the day after, headed south. Dean, relegated to the passenger seat, belts Iron Maiden at the top of his lungs.

"You sound like something's chewin' on your leg," Sam says, and Dean smirks and sings even louder.

They see the vultures first, before anything else. They're still a few miles off when Sam spots them, riding the thermal upward in tight spirals.

"Dean," he says.

Dean shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "I know," he says grimly.

The girl can't be older than five or six—it's hard to say exactly, with her face stripped off like that, peeled like a plum. She's sitting propped on the front steps, the front of her dress soaked with old blood, dried into a stiff crust. From the stench, she's been out there a few days.

Sam retches into the dust, palms planted on his knees. Dean's broad hand settles on his back and draws circles there, soothing.

"Fuck." Sam spits, wipes his mouth.

"We'll get the damn thing," Dean says.

They wrap the little girl in a canvas sheet and bury her beneath the only tree in the yard, a twisted, scraggly thing, warped from years of too little water and too much sun. Sam beats his shovel into the packed earth, muscles straining.

"Hey," Dean says. He's got his shirt off, his shoulders bunching pale and freckled. "Sammy. Go wait in the car, yeah? I've got this one."

Sam shakes his head. "I'm not—"

"Yeah, you are," Dean says. "I mean it. Move your ass."

And Sam goes. He sits sideways on the bench seat, his boots stirring up dust currents, little rivers with no source and no mouth. He drinks a bottle of water and watches as Dean sweats and curses cheerfully at the hard ground, riddled through with roots.

Dean finishes and comes over with his shovel in one fist, mopping at his face with his balled-up t-shirt. He flicks Sam's forehead, lightly smacks the side of Sam's face. "Hey."

"I'm okay," Sam says.

"Yeah, all right," Dean says. He tosses his shirt onto the back seat. "Let's go salt and burn this motherfucker, yeah?"

"Okay," Sam says. He feels wracked with visions, hollow as a cicada shell. He's seen this before, all of it—the little girl, the thing that killed her—and Dean, his ankle having given out again, unable to roll away in time. There's blood. Sam knows that much. "Are you sure—"

Dean rolls his eyes. "I'm not gonna _die_ , Sammy. You've been wrong about this stuff before."

That night, they spend four hours at the hospital, Sam pacing in the halls while Dean gets seventy-two stitches and a walking cast.

"See," he says, leaning heavily on Sam while they walk out to the car, "I told you I wasn't gonna die."

Sam should probably be panicking at such a close call, but he isn't. Dean's injuries are customary, a ritual they repeat every few months, the patterns of it well-established and comforting. Dean's death is something Sam can't bring himself to contemplate.

***

There's no turning back, and so Sam gives himself to it entirely: lets his body remember how to kick and spin away, every lesson learned as a child flooding back into his limbs, muscle memory more powerful than all of his years without practice. He lets his mind wash clean with visions, terrible and spare, and they startle and amaze him at every turn.

Dean startles him. In Kentucky, Sam lets him into his bed—doesn't _let_ , which sounds like a pat on the head, something you do for a good dog. Sam throws back his comforter and watches as Dean twitches forward and then back, wide-eyed, still soft with sleep and rumpled in his boxers.

"Come on," Sam murmurs. "Can we? Do you want to?"

"Yeah," Dean says hoarsely.

Dean's gentler than Sam's been imagining. He kisses Sam slowly, both hands on Sam's face, and tugs at the soft hair in Sam's armpit, which makes Sam squirm and twist his hips.

It's too hot in the room, the air conditioner having died at some point the night before. They rock their hips together, both of them still in their shorts, Dean pressing wet kisses all over Sam's neck. Sam's orgasm spirals out of his belly in a hot wave, and he shudders through it, clutching at Dean's sweat-slick shoulders.

"God," Dean says, and spurts wet heat against Sam's hip.

That's only the first time.

Sam thought it would make him feel dirty, all of his cultural indoctrination rebelling against the hard truth of his hand around his brother's cock, but it turns out that all he feels is relief, and a shaky, uncertain upwelling of joy.

***

They're in Philadelphia for two days, getting some information from a retired hunter who lives in Chestnut Hill. Sam goes for coffee at daybreak, while Dean's still drooling on his pillow. On his way back to the motel, he passes an alleyway full of pigeons, and they scatter away from him, a fluttering mass of gray and white feathers and panicked, scritching feet. It makes him smile, somehow, to see their graceless flight up to the rooftops, their fat and mangy bodies flapping.

***

Sam's very first memory is of Dean. They were at a park somewhere, and Dean had a baseball, was tossing it up into the air and catching it again. Sam trailed after him, whining; he remembers wanting to play, to not be too little for it anymore. He doesn't know what made Dean change his mind, but he gave Sam the baseball, showed him how to hold it, his pudgy hand gripping it awkwardly. Sam can still feel the seams under his fingers, hear Dean saying, "Soon you'll be a big boy, Sammy."

It's been that way all his life: Dean leading the way, showing him how to do things, and Sam trailing desperately after. His first year at Stanford, he sent Dean desperate text messages, looking for advice about girls, laundry, his work-study job. Back then, despite his anger at Dean's blind obedience to John, he thought Dean had all the answers.

He knows better now, but there's a part of him that still sees Dean the way he did when he was a child: loving, perfect, larger than life.

***

In Nevada, he has a sudden vision of three women dying; it rips through his head like paper tearing, not noisy but sudden.

"Stop," he says, fumbling blindly at the dashboard, still halfway caught in the vision. "Dean, stop, turn around, we have to—we're going—"

Dean slams on the brakes and wrenches the car onto the shoulder. A horn blares. Sam clutches at his temples, rolling through it, and then Dean's hands are on him, turning him, tilting his head up.

" _Sam_ ," Dean says.

"I'm okay," Sam says, "I'm okay, I saw—Dean, we have to go to Colorado."

Dean doesn't ask any questions. He throws the car into gear and they're off, tires spinning fast along the highway.

In Utah, the car breaks down. Sam paces; Dean clanks around beneath the hood, muttering. The vision's still crackling urgent fire along Sam's skin. He never knows exactly when they'll happen, these things that he sees, but he generally has a rough idea, and this one's rushing toward him like a freight train.

He watches the little starlings perched along the telephone wire overhead, nudging at each other and tucking their heads back behind their wings.

"Fucking piece of shit wrench," Dean mutters, tossing it back in the tool box.

"Do you—I can help," Sam says.

"Not enough room," Dean says, "you'll just get in the way." He straightens up, sighing, and wipes his face with his forearm, smearing grease. "Christ, Sam, I'm working as fast as I can, the fucking _car_ —"

"I know," Sam says. "Not everything's your fault, Dean. We'll get there when we get there."

When they get there, it's too late. The women are already dead, three sisters, murdered in their beds by the spirit of a man their grandfather beat to death fifty years before. All that Sam and Dean can do is salt down his bones and watch while they burn.

***

Sam wanted to be a lawyer because of how clear-cut it was, all those laws and regulations dictating who was right, who was wrong. There were always gray areas, but there were rules for dealing with that, too. Everything had a procedure, a precedent, or a higher court to appeal to.

He abandoned that orderly world when he left Stanford. He knows that; he's chosen to be here, riding shotgun with Dean; but he's still furious that he can't control his life anymore, that things happen which he has no control over, that people die or fall in love or grow old and nothing he can do changes any of that.

They're two hundred miles away, eating breakfast in a rundown diner on the side of the interstate, when Sam loses it between one bite of eggs and another. "I can't do this," he says; pushes his plate away, stands up, and walks out of the restaurant.

There's a pause, and then Dean bursts through the door, pulling on his jacket. "Sam," he calls, "hey, Sam, wait up," but Sam's striding across the parking lot, walking toward the empty field behind the 7-11, and he hears Dean but doesn't stop.

"Sam," Dean calls again, and Sam hears his footsteps picking up speed, trotting quickly to catch up with Sam's longer legs. He's expecting it, but he still jerks away when Dean's hand closes on his elbow.

"Don't," he says, stomach roiling.

"Hey," Dean says, grabbing at him, one hand hooked in Sam's belt. "Sam. Talk to me. What's going on, you're freakin' out, man, I don't—"

Sam takes a deep breath, and the oxygen fuels the smoldering rage inside of him, ignites it and flares it outward. "Dean—"

"Is this about those chicks? Cause it's not like—"

"They died for _no reason_ ," Sam yells, everything bursting out of him at last. "And we could've _stopped_ it, Dean, we could've—"

"There's never a reason," Dean says. "I hate to break it to you, Sammy. The world's full of random chance, and you aren't always gonna be able to ride in on your white horse and save the day."

"I should," Sam says. "What's the reason for this, otherwise, all the things I see, if I can't even _help_ people when they need it?"

"There's no reason," Dean says. "It just is."

"There's gotta be a reason," Sam says.

Dean shakes his head. "No, Sammy. There isn't."

That's the worst part: the arbitrary nature of life. He can't explain the things that happen to him, the things that happen to other people. He loves Dean because of shared blood and history; he eats eggs Benedict because Jess cooked it for him; he has brown hair because of a random shuffling of genetic material, the way two chromosomes happened to slot together. None of it means anything.

There's a meteor shower that night. They're driving on back roads, and there's nothing around for miles, just a few scattered farmhouses and a million acres of soy fields. Dean pulls over and they get out, lean against the side of the car. Sam tucks his hands in his armpits.

"Huh," Dean says, as they watch the quick streaks of light across the sky.

"It means something," Sam insists.

"Yeah, like what," Dean says, mouth pursed, skeptical.

Sam says, "I don't know."

"Sammy," Dean says. He slides one hand down Sam's hip, tugging him in close. "You're okay."

It's a statement, and Sam responds to the imperative, always has. "Yeah." He loves Dean because their mother gave birth to them, out of all the potential children she might have had; there's no design to it, nothing planned or intended, but it's love nonetheless.  



End file.
